I remember clearly my days of watching the Thundercats cartoon on TV back in the day. Then came carbon copies of the 'Cats in the form of Silverhawks (Thundercats in space!) and TigerSharks (Thundercats in the ocean!) but I was really into Thundercats most rather than the latter two. When kids of the 80s get very excited about a particular cartoon show on TV, inevitably they will drag their parents to the nearest TRU and get the action figures of the characters they like most. Pretty interesting huh? So was life in the 80s.
Back in the day there were practically no scalpers or opportunistic profiteers that'll sweep your toy aisle clean or engage in back door dealings with unscrupulous TRU employees just to get all those hard-to-find 1-per-case action figures even before they hit retail shelves.
Yup, I'm talking about the days when your toy aisle look like this at all times...
Or this.....
Note: Images from the internet, where else eh? Yours truly didn't have cameras every time his family took him to visit toy stores back in the 80s.
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So let's get to today's point of discussion. I've said it before that I was more into Thundercats back in the 80s. Nickelodeon had that less-than-successful Thundercats series some years ago. It wasn't that bad to me. At least it gave us some cool action figures (in two scales nonetheless!) and a new iteration of the Thundertank, something that I didn't have the chance to own in 1985.
Let us start talking about Thundercats action figures. I'm not gonna go into the Nickelodeon 'Cats but let's get straight into the 'classics' version. And when I say classics I'm actually talking about the modern re-issue of Lion-O and gang, not the classic LJN 1985-1988 action figures (although that itself may be a great discussion point sometime in the future, perhaps).
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The closest we've got many years ago to get modern representations of our beloved classic 'Cats was in the form of Mezco's Mega Scale action figures. To me they're more like half-statues really. When I say these are half-statues it means that they lack articulations from their waists downwards. They're sort of static statues with arm articulations. These look great in any Thundercats fans' collection but I have some issues with them which hindered my desires to get them into my man cave. First of all, I don't really have space for these fine looking 14-inch statues. Secondly, their aftermarket prices have really soared like crazy so I'm not really keen to backpedal and pay extortion prices for them. So forget about them statues, there's gotta be other alternatives to these.
Back when Matty Collector had it big with their Masters of the Universe Classics line, fans were also pestering Matty to get the Thundercats license so that they could somehow pair Lion-O with He-Man in some fantasy crossover scene (for the record this already happened in one of Image Comics' title!). Surprisingly Matty Collector did NOT get the coveted license and instead it went to Bandai of all people. Bandai is of course a world famous Japanese toy company with deep roots in producing action figures but they weren't that famous in producing western action characters as opposed to Mattel, Hasbro or Kenner. In fact, the original 1980s Thundercats action figures were made by LJN, a New Jersey based toy company who went bust in 1995 contrary to popular beliefs that LJN was a Japanese company. And so fans crossed their fingers hard in hope that Bandai wouldn't mess things up and somehow gave us quality Thundercats classic action figures that can rival or at least go hand-in-hand with the likes of Matty Collector's MOTU Classic line. The first batch/wave saw Bandai giving us Lion-O and Tigra which was applauded by all but there was only one problem.....those were in the 8" scale (Bandai wanted to pay homage to the original LJN scale) and already fans were complaining that these wouldn't be at scale with the MOTU Classics action figures!
Bandai miraculously listened to their disgruntled fans and took a bold step to scale down their Thundercats Classic line to 6". And so Bandai rebooted their Thundercats line and re-started with a 6" Lion-O and a 6" Mumm-Ra just to appease the growing unsettled fan base. What Bandai didn't know was (or did know but decided to ignore) the fact that the MOTU Classic line was actually at the 7" scale rather than 6". Lion-O and Mumm-Ra were very popular and were snapped up almost immediately by collectors in hope that Bandai will be releasing the rest of the Thundercats characters after the first two. As fate has it, that dream was never meant to be as the Bandai Thundercats franchise soon faded into obscurity and we never got to see any further characters from the line.
And then suddenly in 2016, Matty Collector shocked the collecting world by announcing that they were offering a subscription under the 'Third Earth' banner to offer us 5 spanking brand new Thundercats action figures that will go side by side, scale-wise, with their MOTU Classic line. Those who subscribed will also get the sorcerer Mumm-Ra action figure as an incentive. My better half was ecstatic over this piece of news so naturally I jumped in head first to subscribe to the plan.
Matty Collector's Third Earth subscription meant that collectors were on the verge of finally getting that Thundercats collection that we deserve after waiting for some time going through that grueling time with Bandai. During SDCC, a Wilykit & Wilykat 2-pack was announced thus bringing the total no of new Thundercats figures under the Matty Collector era to seven.
The release of (yet another) Lion-O under Matty Collector meant that collectors got three (3) different Lion-O's in recent times albeit different scales. And yes, Matty Collector's version was glaringly the best aesthetically.
For a moment, collectors were able to create scenes such as the one below, although Tigra had to be put further behind to adjust for his apparent larger scale. By this time, many collectors were already drooling to the prospect of getting a Cheetara or maybe a proper scaled 7" Tigra to complete the core team.
My favorite from the 'original 5' from Matty Collector was the 'Sorcerer Mumm-Ra'. He looks so menacing!
And Matty Collector just had to rain on our parade by announcing that they'll be closing their online shop because the big guns over at Mattel just didn't have the appetite to continue with the business model. Naturally, their Thundercats license were abruptly halted and it can only mean one thing....that we collectors were gonna be stuck with that seven (7) figures and only those. Bummer.
I remembered all this happening BEFORE the Third Earth subscription was due for production. So what happened was Matty Collector offered full refunds to those not wanting to proceed with the subscription. Many collectors did get their refund but a large number of those who had already committed to the Third Earth subscription stayed on just to get those 5 promised action figures and later to also get the 2-pack announced at SDCC (yours truly included).
As the MOTU Classic license was due to be passed on to Super 7, another online based action figure manufacturer, collectors and fans alike began to assume that the Thundercats license would follow suit too into Super 7 list of properties. Oh how wrong we were back then when Warner Bros (that's the current owner of the Thundercats license, taking over from Rankin-Bass/Lorimar in 1989) didn't agree terms with Super 7, so the license kind of stayed with Matty Collector till the very end.
It was only recently (I think it was a year or two ago) that Super 7 finally announced that they've managed to get the license to produce and continue the Thundercats Classic line from Warner Bros. Up to this year's SDCC, there was no announcement by Super 7 on which Thundercats characters they'd be producing first or when they'd be actually doing so. Word is that Super 7 will somehow be announcing it at the upcoming Powercon 2019 event, sometime in August '19 (that's this month!).
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The funny thing is, there were these excellent fan-made images of 'supposed new Thundercats Classic action figures' that made their rounds in the internet. It was so convincing that several online stores/sellers have already opened pre-orders for them!
I must admit, they look pretty good and I don't mind getting them at all if the designs are proved to be true eventually!
I leave you with the images of these really convincing fan-made card designs. I personally love Jaga and Grune! Do enjoy the images, they'll do for now.
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